The Tuscan sun traced its deceptive path over the birthplace of Galileo, the one man it could not deceive, and cast long shadows across the Square of Miracles, home of the Leaning Tower. This was Pisa and the year was 1771.

The square was deserted, all the travelers having departed, but beneath the square, there was some clandestine activity going on, in the guise of construction work. Deep in a secret, subterranean chamber, freshly dug by a crew of Sardinian labourers, final work was about to begin.

The Sardinians, shirtless and leaning on their picks and shovels, waited for a man dressed in the full regalia of a Master Mason. Wearing a black suit, green sash, and a lambskin apron was the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Pietro Leopoldo.

He was the one who'd commissioned the excavation after 'rediscovering' the true location of the Sinking Treasure of the Savoy, rumored to be millions of dollars worth of gold and jewels.

The Duke, a Savoy himself, had taken great pains to uncover the secret of the sinking treasure and why it sank whenever someone tried to reach it. Was it an ingenious booby-trap made by the Swiss Savoy or a divine judgement on the Savoy for the Massacre in Piedmont in 1655?

So far, his efforts had failed to raise the treasure. Every prior shaft, sunk to get to it, was immediately flooded with water from the Arno River.

Pumping out the water didn't work so he decided to changed the course of the river to block the source of the water. Now it was time to see if the idea worked.

At a sign from the Duke, the Sardinians started digging again. The hole went down another 7 meters until they hit a layer of cement and then wood. It was the top of a wooden vault enclosed in concrete.

They drilled through the wood into the vault and they could hear metalic objects clinking inside. They had found the treasure!

But it was late and they'd have to leave and return the following night. They all clamored out of the hole and were readying themselves to go when suddenly there was a loud explosion and all hell broke loose.

Part of the earthen wall collapsed behind them and the hole in the ground rose before them. Some of the Sardinians cheered, thinking the curse was lifted and the treasure was rising up.

That is until muddy water rushed into the chamber and a great big tidal wave swamped everyone and everything in the room.The Grand Duke was swept up along with the Sardinians.

The wave sent them all towards the entrance and two made it through. The others were swept back into the chamber and were trapped in the rising waters.

When everything settled, the unfortunate ones were buried up to their waists in mud and debris and drowned as the waters rose to the ceiling. The two lucky ones did the death stroke through a flooded passageway to a hole in a stone wall leading into a crypt in a inundated basement. They could see light above them through the dark waters.

Outside, the Leaning Tower was still standing and the Tuscan sun was beginning to rise. Galileo might say that we had completed the circle and were returning to the light of day, and he'd be right.

No treasure came up with the lone survivors as they exited wet and filthy from the Baptistery of St. John into the Square of Miracles. It was the Grand Duke and a Sardinian named Vinci.

One would keep their secret and only reveal it in a hidden code in a portrait of himself but the other would carry on the legend and the legacy of the cursed treasure forever...

"Bim-ba-rim, Bim-bo-ba-ri-la!"

Tomb raider, descended from a long line of plunderers, Antonio Vinci, sang a Sardinian shepherd song as others worked.

Bim-ba-rim, Bim-bo-ba-ri-la!

In an underground chamber, spotlit with hot lights, and smelling of sweat, and sewer gas, Antonio was leaning against an earthen wall, near a wheelbarrow, waiting as it was being filled with dirt by three men in shackles. All three were secret-bloodline investigators who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The horizontal shaft they were working on had been completely obstructed by a cave-in at the other end, hundreds of meters down. The cave-in was accidentally caused by the Englishman in the chain gang, Robert Stephenson III, when he stole an artifact from a group of Freemasons.

Now he and his two would-be rescuers -- American brothers, Bobby Marin and Dave Burton -- were being forced to dig it out, as their captor stood by singing.

Lambkins when they play/ Run without restraint/ Then return to the flock/ Bim barim bam bim

Bobby and Dave grunted to the beat. Robert followed suit, rhythmically grunting between each line.

Bobby shovelled dirt into the wheelbarrow and tried to start up a conversation with his Sardinian dungeon master, whom he knew was from Florence.

"Do you still live in Florence, Antonio?" he asked while he continued to work.

"No," said the Italian. "I live in Barbaricina. That's on the west side of Pisa."

"No wonder this place smells like a hotel I once stayed in in Pisa!" Bobby's brother David said to himself.

"Why are you here?" Bobby asked.

"You know!" said Antonio mysteriously.

"The box of bloody neckties?" Bobby guessed.

"Yes. I want my box of cravats! You lost it in that tunnel and I want it back!"

"It's not yours!" said Robert Stephenson III, emphatically. "That box belonged to my great uncle Roslyn D'Onston Stephenson!"

"The box may have once belonged to him," said Antonio. "But the bloody ties belonged to Jack the Ripper. Aleister Crowley brought it to Italy and I was its keeper until it was stolen and fell into the hands of the Freemasons of America. I'm grateful that you stole it from them, Robert. Grazie! Unfortunately, when you took it, you fell into the pit and were ejected into this tunnel and so far only you were recovered!"

"Why do you want it so much?" Bobby asked.

"It is a powerful talisman," said Antonio, "and it has the powers of necromancy. We use it to conjure the spirits of the dead."

"Necromancy!" exclaimed Robert. "How could it have the powers of necromancy when my uncle Roslyn is still alive?!"

"You think Roslyn alive a hundred years after he disappeared?" said the Sardinian.

"Yes, Roslyn is immortal!" Robert declared.

"Perhaps Roslyn is alive. But the real Jack the Ripper is dead. His spirit I conjured up to protect me and it has. Now his spirit will help me lift the curse on the Sinking Treasure of Atlantis!"

"The sinking treasure of Atlantis?" said Robert, mystified. "What is he talking about?"

"It must be another cursed treasure," Bobby guessed.

"Sinking treasures supposedly sink in the ground whenever someone tries to reach it," said David.

"It is the lost treasure of Atlantis that sinks in the ground," said Antonio.

"Where did you hear of such a thing?" asked Bobby.

"My father told me about it. My brothers and me used to help him steal archaeological treasures from the excavation sites back home in Sardinia. Bronze statuettes and ancient daggers four thousand years old. Loot you could not imagine. But my father told us there were greater treasures on the mainland. Treasures that still belonged to Sardinians. Sardinia was part of the lost continent of Atlantis and the treasures of Atlantis were taken away before it sank. Taken away to Tuscany. The Grand Duke of Tuscany discovered where it was but could not reach the treasure. No matter how he much he tried, it always sank. So he sealed it up and hid it's location in a painting. But now I know where it is and I know how to get it."

"The lost treasure of Atlantis?" said Dave skeptically. "And the treasure sinks? Like the mythical continent?!"

"You think it is a myth?" said Antonio. "That it doesn't exist? You think I am grabbing at flies?"

"I don't know about flies," said Dave, "but people have been looking for the Oak Island treasure for 200 years and all they've found is some china."

"Well, you can keep on digging until you too find China!"

Antonio had no more to say and just wheeled out the full wheelbarrow of dirt, leaving them to keep digging and digging, and, in Dave's case, thinking and thinking.

"I got another idea," he said finally.

"You got an idea to get us out of here?" Bobby asked hopefully.

"No," said David distractedly. "I got a new idea of what is behind the legend of the Sinking Treasure."

Bobby was less than enthusiastic and even Robert didn't look too keen on hearing his idea. It sounded like it was going to be another theory explaining how a crazy myth was behind their predicament.

But they knew that eventually they'd have to listen to it. And that's when bad things would only get worse...

The Duke's well-layed plans had failed miserably. The treasure had sunk out of sight and out of reach again and 16 men had died!

An angry Vinci cursed the Duke and the treasure saying 16 Tuscans must die before the treasure is found, one for every one of his compatriots that died in the pit.

All he accomplished by diverting the Arno was flood Pisa and open up some land in Barbaricina, some of which he gave to Vinci to appease him.

Vinci kept the land but went back to Sardinia to start a family and told all his sons about the fortune in treasure, awaiting discovery, under the Square of Miracles. The sons and their sons would grow up to become raiders of lost antiquities.

In 1783, he commissioned the mapmaker Teodoro Viero to make a coded map of the sinking treasure's location. The map is encoded in an engraved portrait of the Duke.

A hundred years later in 1883, Carlo Collodi would write his famous book, The Adventures of Pinocchio. Ever since, because of Pinocchio's adventures with the fox and the cat and their supposedly 'miraculous' field of money trees, the Square of Miracles has been commonly known as the Field of Miracles.

Almost 200 years later, the Monster of Florence killings began. Sixteen people would die before it was over...

David would tell them anyway, even though Bobby and Robert didn't want to hear it.

They were right not to want to. It was nothing they needed to know and something they didn't.

It was a new theory, based the research of Arthur Morinz, Dave's and Bob's dad, about the legend that trapped them there, in their hopeless situation ... a new theory explaining the irony, the injustice, and the complete senselessness of it all.

"The Cajuns and the Acadians of Nova Scotia are the same people," he said, "because the Acadians were driven out by the British and most of them relocated in Louisiana. Dad discovered legends of cursed treasures going back to Cajun folktales of Jean Lafitte. Louisiana had its legends of cursed pirate treasure that sinks and the legend may have made its way to Italy through the Italian pirate and Lafitte lieutanant, Vincent Gambi."

Bobby didn't get it at first but then it hit him--the complete senselessness of it all.

"Are you telling me that all of this mess is the result of one lie that came from America?"

A disillusioned David nodded slowly yes.

"...even the Monster of Florence mess..."

"yes. yes.... yes."

They tried to forget about it as they went back to digging. But all they did was dig themselves ever deeper into a bottomless pit of chagrin, hoping that the treasure they sought, like the things they treasured in their hearts, would not sink away from them forever.